WASEAN Ratings

WASEAN (pronounced Wah-Shawn) is a college football team rating system. The acronym stands for Winning% Algorithm for Scoring ExpectAtioN. The name not only describes the system, but honors Toledo's star running back during the 1990s, Wasean Tait. More details are here.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

There is a lot of talk as to whether or not there should be a rematch between LSU and Alabama in the national championship game. Put WASEAN firmly in the camp that says, ‘yes’.

How far ahead are Alabama and LSU? According to WASEAN, Alabama should be a 7.5 point favorite on a neutral field over #3 Wisconsin. That’s as far ahead as Wisconsin is ahead of #10 Michigan or #11 Arkansas, for example.

Another way to look at this is that LSU would have to lose to Georgia 30-0 to fall behind Wisconsin for #2.

I’m definitely not in favor of a rematch in most circumstances. In most circumstances, we really don’t know if #2 is better than #3 or #4, so I’d lean towards giving someone else a shot.

But Alabama and LSU played an overtime game, as have beaten all others. They’ve clearly proven they are the two best teams in the country.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Oregon and Oklahoma State have moved up to 3-4, while Stanford and Boise State drop to 7-8 after losing. I don’t see much chance of the “Big Eight” changing, as the gulf between #8 and #9 and is bigger than the spread between #9 and #17.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

WASEAN treats overtime games as ties . . . and while LSU closed much of the gap on Alabama (a road tie is more impressive than a home tie), they are still a hair (.0037) behind Alabama. Stanford is a solid third, but .0352 behind LSU for some perspective on how close Alabama and LSU are at 1-2.

There are just 3 unbeaten/untied (in regulation) teams remaining in the FBS. #4 Boise State, #8 Oklahoma State and #9 Houston. Houston is not on the same level with the others – the Cougars are closer to #20 than to #8.

Sunday, October 16, 2011

A few of the pretender unbeatens (Michigan, Illinois and Georgia Tech), although Michigan’s ranking barely budged. Note, the Wolverines’ rating took quite a hit, from .8771 to .8419. But, they were far enough ahead of the pack that they had some wiggle room.

Notre Dame’s rating took quite a hit, despite a week off. The Irish fell from #10 to #16 – Pitt, Air Force, Purdue and South Florida all lost, and while Michigan State won they beat Michigan.

Clemson needed to come from behind to beat #62 Maryland. I’m still calling them a pretender. We’ll find out about Kansas State in two weeks. At that point they play #5 Oklahoma, #8 Oklahoma State, #10 Texas A&M over a three-week stretch.

Sunday, October 9, 2011

Not a whole lot of shakeup at the top this week. A little minor shuffling, but no one moved in or out of the top 10.

At this point, we can say that we have 6 really good teams, one of which will likely win the championship.

RK

LW

Team

WASEAN

RW

RL

RT

1

1

Alabama

0.9250

6

0

0

2

7

Boise State

0.9159

5

0

0

3

2

Oklahoma

0.9156

5

0

0

4

3

Stanford

0.9134

5

0

0

5

5

LSU

0.9050

6

0

0

6

4

Wisconsin

0.9022

5

0

0

Note that Boise State’s non-conference schedule is starting to look pretty solid. Georgia (who Boise beat 35-21 in Atlanta) is #12 in WASEAN and Toledo (40-15) is #27. Unfortunately, Georgia doesn’t play LSU or Alabama, so a direct comparison for Boise won’t be in the cards, unless Georgia can get to the SEC championship game. That would require South Carolina to lose another in league while Georgia runs the table.

We also have two very good teams (Michigan and Oklahoma State) that are undefeated, but probably not as good as the teams above. Oregon is number 7, but they’ve already lost to LSU, and aren’t very likely to get a shot.

RK

LW

Team

WASEAN

RW

RL

RT

8

6

Michigan

0.8771

6

0

0

9

9

Oklahoma State

0.8564

5

0

0

Then we have the pretenders, teams that are undefeated so far, but really aren’t anything special.

Thursday, October 6, 2011

I don’t have very much time for analysis this week, but I’ll note that the rankings through this point last season had 89% correlation with the final regular season rankings – so we do know a lot about these teams at this point.

Thursday, February 10, 2011

I realize I’m about a month late here; but hey, this isn’t my full-time job!

Auburn won the national championship, and for that I congratulate them. The Tigers had a great season. I don’t think they were the best team in the country though - when looking at the entire season.

That doesn’t mean they didn’t deserve the championship, the best team doesn’t always win. At the end of the year, they probably were the best team, or at least as good as anyone else. But they were nothing special for the first half of the season, need I remind you of their OT game with Clemson, or their 37-34 nail-biter with Kentucky?

That being said, I am going to rework the ratings in the off-season, so they give more of a feel for who had the best season, as opposed to who would win if we played every game 1000 times. The idea is to look at a team’s opponents and the scores of the games, then look at the odds that a team of a certain quality would have the team’s record against that schedule. It’s something similar to what Bill James did in his early Abstracts when rating pitchers.

Also note who the only team undefeated in regulation was this year. That was TCU.

Please click the ‘read more’ link to see the complete ratings and have a great off-season! Also note that for the FCS teams, the regular season rank is where the team was ranked after week 12 of the season, while for the FBS teams it’s where they were ranked after week 15.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Boise State finishes the year on top despite their overtime loss at Nevada. Would I rank them number 1, personally? No. I’d rank them fourth or fifth. Do I think they could be justified as no worse than even money on a neutral field with any team in the country? I do think that. WASEAN, as it’s designed right now measures a team’s strength – not how good their season necessarily was.

I’m working on that though. I’m working on a methodology for a separate rating that would measure the quality of the team’s season. It will still adjust for schedule strength. But it will also make the ratings look a little more ‘normal’.

The idea is to figure WASEAN as I currently do, but then add a step that will look at the team’s schedule and emphasize wins and losses (as opposed to points scored and allowed) more. Hopefully I can get that done in the next couple of weeks.

Without further adieu, here are the final regular season rankings. Well, almost final. I’ll add in the Army-Navy game next week (as well as the elite 8 of the FCS playoffs).